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Homeric!

Entries tagged with easily amused

Thanks to rhuia, I spent a lot of time this evening thinking about the much-missed mundane_bingo comm over on DreamWidth.

Now there's a bingo after my own heart, although like so many other fabulous comms (yes, I'm looking at you, metafandom) it became moribund long before I learnt of its existence.

Anyway, mundane_bingo was special because it offered prompts like these:

• trying to decide where to eat dinner with a group
• birds poop on clean drying laundry
• using a lint roller to get pet fur off your clothes
• foot falling asleep

...and then people actually wrote fics for them <333

As I was mooning over the final mundane_bingo post, I noticed for the first time that the creators actually offered some interesting permutations. You could request an American-oriented card, a European-oriented card, or (special third option!) "a card that does not skew towards an American or European perspective of mundane".

So naturally* I thought, "What would a Canadian mundane card look like?" And set out to design one.

And here's the result! Feel free to use any of these if you're stumped by your picfor1000 prompt; I'll make it totally kosher by including this year's prompt in the wildcard square. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Someone at work brings in a box of Timbits

Voting in local by-election

Too much/too little salt on roads in winter

Forgot to put store receipt in paper recycling bin

Reads latest Michael Ondaatje because one feels one should

Not enough maple syrup for waffles

Finds Don Cherry annoying

Flummoxed about how to pronounce flocons de maïs

Brief fretting over whether to take elevator vs. stairs

Knows someone whose brother owns a snowmobile

Embarrassed over having studied French for 10 years in school yet still cannot hold simple conversation or follow news on Radio-Canada

Using chopsticks

FREE SPACE! or, Group 11

ESPACE LIBRE! ou, Groupe Onze

Does not know cost of a first-class postage stamp

Flosses with exaggerated diligence just before visit to dentist

Knows and can sing the chorus of "I'se The B'y" (but none of the verses)

Landlord will not allow pets

Still not used to metric OR is very comfortable with metric

Coin laundry does not accept new loonies

Overly talkative taxi driver

Filing income tax on time

Is roundly scolded by stranger for failing to pick up dog poop

Queuing obediently for a bus

Likes earflaps on hat even though they look silly

Has never eaten poutine

*In fact, gratuitiously imposing a 'Canadian' framework on any passing trifle is not only the sheer definition of true Canuckitude, it should probably be included ON THE CARD ITSELF.

A while back, we had a discussion on the blog about the cover art for my princess novels. For the most part, I really like these covers, but they’re not perfect.

Now I could talk about the way women are posed in cover art … or I could show you. I opted for the latter, in part because it helped me to understand it better. I expected posing like Danielle to feel a little weird and unnatural. I did not expect immediate, physical pain from trying (rather unsuccessfully) to do the hip thing she’s got going on.

I recruited my wife to take the pictures, which she kindly did with a minimum of laughter.

Being me, I naturally couldn’t stop there. I headed over to Amazon and grabbed a sampling of book covers, primarily urban fantasy, and spent the evening doing a photoshoot. Click on if you want to see the results (or if you just really want to see a shot of topless Jim).

As the rest of you may not know, Western Samoa's time zone has historically been GMT - 11:00 hours. The tiny island nation is thus a godsend to every writer who is struggling frantically to complete her fic by the deadline of midnight "somewhere".

WELL. At the end of 29 December 2011, Western Samoa (now more commonly called Samoa. Who knew?) jumped forward by one day. How? It magically omitted 30 December from the local calendar by repositioning itself to the west of the International Date Line. This was done to help Samoa boost its economy, which relies on doing business with Australia and New Zealand. (Up until now, Samoa was 21 hours behind Sydney, but the change means they are now 3 hours ahead, i.e. GMT + 13:00 hours.)

That's the bad news! Now for the good news.

American Samoa (located some 77 miles away) is still GMT - 11:00 hours. OK, American Samoa doesn't have quite the same ring to it, but frankly let's be grateful there's still a country left standing in that time zone that we can point to when struggling to get our fics done "on time". It's not yet midnight in American Samoa! shall be our new clarion call of last resort.